Record each lathe, mill or machining centre from casting to accuracy test under one serial.

A lathe or machining centre is a long chain of small tolerances. A bed is machined, guideways are ground or scraped, a spindle is fitted, and every step either keeps or loses accuracy.

Most of that chain is held in the heads of senior fitters. The bed number is on a card, the spindle run-in is in a log, and the alignment test is on a sheet. A buyer who calls about a drifting axis long after delivery may find that nobody in the works can reconstruct how that particular machine was built. Accuracy is the product. Nobody wrote it down.

A buyer describes the parts to be machined: size, material, tolerance and batch. The sales engineer proposes a model with a spindle, a turret or a tool changer, a controller and accessories, and prices installation and training. A variant needs a longer bed or a different table size, and goes to design for a drawing.

Castings are stress relieved and machined for beds, columns and saddles, and the guideways are then ground and scraped until the bed holds true. Linear guides, ball screws, spindle cartridges and motors are fitted in the assembly bay, each one entered against the serial as it is bolted on. Each machine is run in and tested for straightness, squareness and positioning accuracy with the instruments your engineers use. A crated machine travels to site. Training closes the job. Spares orders follow the same serial.